Installation at CCS – Remaking COLLOQUY – Progress Update #5

When first unveiled in 1968, Gordon Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles, part of an exhibition in London called Cybernetic Serendipity, was a total surprise and a sensation. Nothing like it had ever been made, an immersive experience with independent mobiles in motion, competing and cooperating with each other. It’s been written about and lauded ever since.

When we unveiled our full-scale replica at MFA Interaction Design at CCS in Detroit on May 11, 2018, just standing around these figures generated surprising insights about human-machine interactions.The overall Colloquy of Mobiles infrastructure is now in place along with the 3 “female mobiles” designed by Yolanda Sonnabend and supports for the “male mobiles.” A prodigious complexity of motors, sensors, lights, and wires all await installation to complete the working replica, our feverish focus for the coming weeks.

The official launch is May 24, 2018, at 5:30PM in the Taubman Center at CCS in Detroit. Please email colloquy2018@gmail.com if you’d like to be placed on the invite list or get information about our livestream. Donations small or large are easily made and very welcome at our donation page. Our official web site is under construction here.

A final treat follows below: experience the scale model of Colloquy, built by CCS MFA IxD students in Studio II: Internet of Things and Prototyping. As part of the COLLOQUY 2018 Project they designed and constructed the model from research on the original design, activating it with motors and sensors and lights to imitate the basic interactivity of the original Colloquy.